There are many myths surrounding the health care debate, but the biggest myth of all is that adequate health care coverage even exists in America. The whole concept is nonsense.

People like Sen. Orrin Hatch & other members of the GOP are often boasting how 84% of Americans have health care coverage. That may be true. But what they don’t tell you is that it is not adequate. Estimates vary on how many people are underinsured so I won’t debate the figures. Instead we should look at the millions who think they have full coverage, who think they are completely covered against any and all situations that may arrive.

The big illusion being that because the insurance companies meet their everyday needs; routine examinations, casting their kid’s broken arm, prescribing drugs, standard surgeries, short hospital stays, etc. doesn’t mean they will be there if and when something extraordinary happens. It doesn’t mean they won’t deny coverage on treatments that are too advanced or too new to have a track record. It doesn’t mean the won’t drop them completely at any time for any reason if they think they can get away with it.

Health insurance companies lie. They make blatant lies, as proven in the last few months of debate. They lie while pouring millions of dollars to lobbyist in an attempt to distort the facts to members of Congress. They lie when they pick and choose statistics to present to the public.

For anyone to think they have “adequate” insurance with any company that deliberately and systematically lies to them, they are sadly mistaken. Which leads me back to Orrin Hatch. Sen. Hatch enjoys the luxury of full coverage for him and his family paid for by US taxpayers. It is considered top-of-the-line coverage. The coverage all Americas should aspire to.

But is it adequate? No.

Along with being a US Senator, Orrin Hatch enjoys the benefit of having a high profile. If Hatch required some expensive treatment or long term extended care, it is doubtful the insurance providers would deny it. It would bring too much bad publicity. But what if Hatch wasn’t in his Senate seat and wasn’t in front of the camera on a routine basis? What would happen if Orrin was just another working stiff? Just another number whose suffering, illness and eventual death was to go unnoticed?

I don’t think I need to answer that. Everyone knows what the truth is. We might not like to admit it. We might like to think we are “adequately” covered. We might like to think that “It won’t happen to me. They won’t drop coverage on me. I’ve been paying for years and they have always been good to me.”

Nonsense. They will drop you like a hot potato with any excuse they can use. They will deny treatment whenever they can. They will side with profits over health whenever they need to, and not think twice about it.

Over the last couple months we have seen one story after another emerge on how people have been denied coverage for outrageous reasons. Acne being considered a pre-existing condition. Baby’s being too big. Women being married to wife-beaters. If you didn’t cross a t or dot an i, you are denied coverage.

Just the idea that such a thing as a “pre-existing condition” even exist is this country is an insult to common decency.

The idea that insurance companies are not “death panels” is insulting. And for any politician to imply otherwise is disgusting. For politicians to seek their own personal and political gains over the betterment of all Americans is un-American and should be punishable by law.

When Rep Alan Grayson said the Republican’s back up plan was “Die Quickly,” he only told half of the story. The more important half is that “Die Quickly” is the policy presented by the health insurance industry during end-of-life term. The quicker you die, the less it costs. Benefits are extended only to a certain degree, and that’s it. It is an acutuarial calculation known as “death for profits.”

I don’t care what kind of coverage you have, it is not adequate. The mere fact that your dollars are doing to CEOs, along with their lawyers, accountants, and other henchmen, who seek reward by denying coverage to others, it is not adequate. It is a system that no one in America should ever accept. And an unacceptable system means that no one, not even Sen. Hatch, has “adequate” health care coverage.

Do you remember when Ronald Reagan said he was sending Chesterfield cigarettes to all his friends for Christmas and you should too? Do you remember Chesterfield had an “independent” study done that declared “cigarettes are good for you?”

Do you remember when Ronald Reagan said Medicare would result in doctors being told what town they could practice medicine in?

Do you remember when congressional Republicans paraded in CEO’s from the tobacco industry to testify that “nicotine is not addictive” and cigarettes “do not cause cancer?” Do you remember GOP members telling us that restricting the tobacco industry was a breach of liberty and freedom?

Do you remember when the chairman of the House Republican Conference distributed campaign checks from a Kentucky tobacco corporation to his friends while Congress was in session?

Do you remember when Republicans stood before Congress and told us that auto safety regulations were a plot to destroy capitalism? Do you remember when right wingers said that seat belts and air bags were communist plots to destroy America? Remember when the GOP told us that we had the best auto safety system in the world and we didn’t need to reform it?

Do you remember how much money was spent to discredit and lobby against Ralph Nader? Do you remember how many people died because of the Corvair’s poor design? Do you remember how many roadblocks the GOP placed against auto safety reform?

If you don’t remember, you should because as Santayan says, “people who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

Here we are at the brink of history with health care reform in the balance.

Do you really think Reagan believed what he said about the merits of smoking Chesterfield, or do you think he just said that because he was being paid to? Do you think Reagan really believed Medicare was “evil” or that it would result in the destruction of America?

Of course not. Reagan was just a paid actor who later became a paid politician. Just like Baucus or Cantor, Reagan would say anything to gain the approval of those who make the right contributions. They are all paid actors/politicians.They say whatever it takes to keep the contributions coming in and if they contradict themselves, so be it.

In the past we had big corporate interests sponsoring phoney “independent” research groups to come up the conclusions that they wanted politicians and pundits to keep repeating. These groups were not unlike Lewin Group of today. (The Lewin Group promotes itself as “unbiased & independent” when in fact they are owned by the insurance giant United Healthcare.) They call themselves “experts” when in fact, their only expertise is in marketing practices of mass deception.

Then there is Betsy McCaughey, Dick Armey, Rick Berman and a host of other disinformationalists who make their living by bombarding the airwaves with absolute lies. And they know that if they lie often enough and get others to repeat it enough, the corporate interests they represent will benefit in the end.

Then there are cheap politicians who will probably rot in hell for preying on the elderly by spewing out nonsense about “death panels” and “plots to kill your grandmother.” They know all too well that sensationalism sells, so they use it as an effective way to pull the wool over people’s eyes.

And of course there are the rating whores like Glenn Beck & Rush Limbaugh who will do anything to draw advertising dollars. I’m sure if Chesterfield could still advertise on TV and radio they would be their biggest sponsors.

Then there are the bloggers, text messagers, and twitterers rapidly typing out variations on whatever they deem to be the cleverist comments of the day. I call them the “textperts.” They repeat whatever they can to get attention without regard to its merits or basis in fact.

But the saddest thing is the people who get swept up in the tidalwave of lies that keep being spewed out by the self-serving corporate pawns. They are the “choking smokers” who don’t realize the “jokers” are laughing all the way to the bank.

Worse, the “choking smokers” are the ones who need healthcare reform the most.

My Success

I measure success not by the number of people I make happy, but by the number of idiots I piss off.

QUOTE

“Republican comes in the dictionary just after reptile and just above repugnant.” ~Julia Roberts

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“A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy” ~Theodore Roosevelt

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"Life is filled w wonderful things but I have yet to meet a neocon who has ever had the capacity to truly appreciate it." ~Pammy

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"Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives." ~John Stuart Mill

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“When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross.” ~Sinclair Lewis

Spend Your Way Into Prosperity

Art Laffer, Reagan's economic advisor, was just on Fox News regurgitating the claim that "you can't spend your way into prosperity.".

I hear it all the time and it is so much nonsense I have to laugh. I borrowed tons of money, and I spent tons of money, getting my business up and going. Last I looked, I was pretty prosperous. So are my employees.

If you walk around your neighborhood, look at all the business that spent their way into prosperity. I have a mom and pop business to one side of me and a Trump building on the other side. My guess is they spent some money getting their businesses going. And they probably had to borrow some money at some point as well.

My suggestion for Mr. Laffer is to stop worrying about Obama and how he is cleaning up the mess Reaganomics left behind, and start thinking of what you did wrong.